THE WOMEN’S SPORTS POLICY WORKING GROUP AND CHAMPION WOMEN RELEASE THE RESULTS OF TWO PETITIONS ASKING CONGRESS AND SPORT GOVERNING BODIES TO PRIORITIZE COMPETITIVE FAIRNESS FOR BIOLOGICAL WOMEN

Over 5446 athletes, parents, coaches and sports officials and others, including over 297 Olympians and Paralympians, have signed onto two petitions: The Women’s Sports Policy Working Group positions and model legislation and the ChampionWomen.com petition that call upon legislatures and sports governance organizations to prioritize fairness and safety for females over blanket transgender inclusion or exclusion in girls’ and women’s competitive sports.

Both petitions ask that legislative bodies and sports organizations ensure that females receive equal opportunities to participate in competitive sports, in the same fair and safe competitive environment as afforded to male athletes.

Sports are sex-segregated around the world, in recognition of the biological, male-puberty athletic advantage. This universal practice is not about privacy, modesty, or to make up for past sex discrimination. Instead, sex-segregated sport is necessary to provide females – half the world’s population – with equal opportunities to participate. It is the only legal basis to continue the practice of sex-segregation.

From the onset of male puberty, male bodies develop to be faster, stronger, and more powerful than female bodies as a group. The performance gap emerging from that point forward ranges from 8% to 50% depending on the sport and event. The more explosive strength the sport or event requires, the bigger the gap between males and females.

In the unlikely event that sports were to be completely redesigned, to be segregated based on some objective physical criteria other than biological sex, e.g., height, weight, bone size, lung size, or wingspan, males would dominate these new categories. Only biological sex-categories can guarantee females a fair playing field in competitive sports. In other words, females cannot overcome this performance gap with more talent or training, better coaching, facilities, or nutrition.

The WSPWG’s policy position is that sport leaders should work cooperatively to fashion rules so that transgender girls and women are fully welcome into sport. Their sport performances should be respected in girls’ and women’s competitive sports if they are separately scored OR if they can demonstrate that their male post-puberty advantage has been sufficiently mitigated. Similar separate scoring based on performance advantages are already fully accepted in sports, such as age categories, or weight categories in wrestling, rowing, and weightlifting, etc.

People of good faith must be able to come together and envision a girls’ and women’s sport space where all girls and women would be welcome, all girls and women would be respected, all girls and women would experience the same fair competition as boys and men; a place where the competitive achievements of females and transgender girls and women would be equally celebrated. In such a construct, biological sex differences and gender identity differences would be accepted as normal human differences.

2022 is the 50th anniversary of Title IX. We should not be teaching our daughters to be gracious losers to athletes with unfair, insurmountable, biological advantage in their competitive sports.

Please see the WSPWG policies, legal proposals, science, and frequently asked questions here: https://womenssportspolicy.org/